Click Fraud- a night mare for advertisers

Pay per click marketing, kick started by Google in 1999, has been doubling its growth virtually ever year. Being one of the most inexpensive and effective way to reach the target audience, it continues to gain popularity in the online marketing segment. Virtually all major search engines, as Google, MIVA, Yahoo Search Marketing, Search 123 and Kanoodle.com offer Pay per click (PPC) campaigns, where the advertiser pays only when a visitor clicks the ad link form the site of the publisher. This online advertisement has grown so popular that in many segments, it has outgrown and replaced print media campaigns as well. So far, the biggest threat to PPC is the Click-fraud. However, for many reasons, such as petty gains by publishers, or your competition trying to pull you down, click-fraud too is growing as biggest menace to PPC.
You can estimate the nuisance of click fraud from the fact now a days many websites have come up that approach publishers to get ads clicked on their sites from surfers across diverse regions. Revenue generated from such ad clicks, is divided between publisher and such agency that arranges the clicks. The site that arranges for ads to be clicked also enrolls members to click the ads and shares the revenue with them.

Though, there is no tool to measure such frauds, by any conservative estimates, it is estimated that about 20 percent of the ads get clicked by non existent customers. This rate of fraud, by any standards, is certainly unsettling. This is further coupled by the fact that due to increased online advertising, even the bid rate for certain categories of campaigns has gone up by about 50% in past two years.
Who is responsible:
Such click frauds are either driven by greed to make revenue by generating worthless clicks on ads on a publishers network or to force the competition to pay more for advertisement by generating useless clicks. All major search engines as Yahoo or Google are constantly on the move to detect and control such bogus clicks so as to protect its advertisers interest.
The click fraud industry is also getting innovative to evade their detection. Many sites have sprung up on the net that offer incentives, in cash or in kind to click on the ads on a publisher networks and later on the spoils are shared between publisher, the rogue network and workers. The Times of India provided investigative reporting on payment for manual click fraud happening in India. Unethical companies may pay their own employees to click on competitor ads. Last but not least, click fraud can be generated by online robots programmed to click on advertiser or affiliate ads. Some companies go to great lengths creating intricate software that allows for this to happen.
How Can You Deter It?
Many advertisers know about the possibility of click fraud but generally haven't done much in the past to prevent it. Some feel that if they complain to any of the search conglomerates, it could ruin their free listings. Others feel like the problem is beyond them.
Companies who do understand and report click fraud to search engine properties have had success receiving refunds for fraudulent clicks. For those advertisers who want to address the possibility of click fraud in PPC campaigns, good option do exists. At the most basic level, advertisers can use general auditing many have been known to compile lists of sites that generate high numbers of clicks but not sales. This will indeed put up a red flag.
Because of click fraud advancing at such frequency, click fraud detection companies and software have been popping up all over the country. Following are some of the most prominent ones:
WhosClickingWho.com - This fraud detector tracks all PPC search engines, detects multiple IP's, and even pops up a "ClickMinder" after a potential abuser clicks repeatedly over five times.
ClickDetective - ClickDetective allows you to track return visitors to your site and alerts you if there is evidence that your site may be under attack. Its reports show you every click in real time rather than a summary hours later.
Clicklab - Clicklab employs a score-based click fraud detection system that applies a series of tests to each visitor session and assigns scores. Calculations are made to indicate bad/good sessions to show an advertiser the quality of traffic.
Click fraud is a big problem in search engine marketing that's only going to get bigger in the future. It is wise for any online advertiser to implement some auditing system. Why continue to waste precious campaign money?!